What financial incentives do the danish police receive for giving out fines? Is internal policy public knowledge/is there anyone that has some insider information about how they are incentivised to run
fine giving operations?

Context: a police officer clearly running a shift of just giving out fines in Aarhus today sparked my curiosity

Danish police financing from Denmark

29 comments

  1. None, they do it because to many people breaks the laws. They shift focus from week to week. This week was busting people not doing the right thing on their bikes.

  2. What about it? He just dedicated to doing traffic control on that shift. There is no incentives beside improving safty in generel.

  6. The incentive is to make cyclist behave better and thus streets safer for everyone.

    Pretty common to run a “campaign” where they do intensive spot checks in problem areas.

    Same as they do for drunk drivers around big events/holidays and other such hotspots for bad behaviour

  7. The police tend to do certain campaigns once in a while. No idea who manages it, probably the local policy chief or such, but it’s not really uncommon.
    They often do in the fall to check that people remember to put lights on their bikes.

    Where are you from, since this is so outrageous to you?

  8. There are none. They have some main goals, but traffic is not one of them. There goals are public, so you can always see how the politicians wants them priorities its duties and tasks.

  9. Mange folk har travlt med at der ikke er tilskyndelse til at skrive mange bøder, men er en del af politiets finansiering ikke netop finansieret af de bøder de giver? De har f.eks. lige [brugt mange bøder på at uddanne nye betjente](https://nyheder.tv2.dk/politik/2020-12-15-flere-trafikboder-medfinansierer-450-nye-politibetjente). Jeg er ret sikker på, at der er et mål de skal nå hvert år.
    Det skal siges, jeg har intet problem med politiet eller dette, men jeg ved ikke om jeg ville sige, at der ingen tilskyndelse er til at udskrive flere bøder end nødvendigt.

  10. Cops have thresholds they need to reach, which sometimes makes them give fines over nitpicking. Thresholds has to be reached as the state see fines as additional taxes, rather a tool to ensure public safety.

    Our income tax is already pretty high, so collecting taxes this way, doesn’t put us higher on the international tax index, even though internally there is fixed quotas for how much fines they have to give for every year, which police split up in monthly goals. This is also why you are less likely to be fined early on the month, rather than late on the month.

    There are plenty news articles on this: [https://www.berlingske.dk/samfund/betjente-fik-ordre-om-at-udskrive-flere-boeder-4.5-millioner-kroner-paa-hoejkant](https://www.berlingske.dk/samfund/betjente-fik-ordre-om-at-udskrive-flere-boeder-4.5-millioner-kroner-paa-hoejkant)
    And it’s visible on public financial reports as well.

  11. Maybe it is just me, but if you notice the general backlash you get from asking these questions and how they defer from what you might expect from lets say USA?

    In general we are pleased with the police in Denmark. There can be arguments about what tasks they should prioritize, but its not up to the individual policeman.

    If you get a fine in Denmark besides a parking ticket which they dont enforce – its your own fault.

  12. Honestly I don’t get why you are getting so many downvotes. To me it seems like you’re just asking a question to learn something new 🤷‍♂️

    But no, they are just making sure people follow the law. They need to be enforced sometimes, otherwise people will not care for the law. There’s no financial incentive.

  13. Danish Police don’t have a fine quota to meet, if that’s what you are wondering. All revenue goes to the treasury, and each Police department’s budget is not affected by this number.

    This is just standard procedure – to make sure people uphold all laws (even minor infractions), they sometimes do a “control” at certain places. This can be everything from speeding traps, DUI control or biking illegally.

  15. There used to be quotas on how many fines the police had to give each year (in 2015) – not 100% sure they have been abolished. But police chiefs got nice bonuses if they met these quotas and thus raids to catch easy prey and get the fines instead of doing “proper” police work

  16. >What financial incentives do the danish police receive for giving out fines?

    None. The officer issues what appears to be a cyclist an extrajudicial fine for a traffic violation. The cyclist, if he disagrees with the fact that he has committed a violation of the traffic law, can take the fine to court and have a judge look into the case.

    >Is internal policy public knowledge/is there anyone that has some insider information about how they are incentivised to run fine giving operations?

    It is a very common occurrence for officers to issue fines to people who violate the traffic law. This can happen, for example, if you run a red light or drive without lights when it is dark. Most people know this.

  18. They can take all the money for all I care, as long as they stop all the assholes that barely even think traffic rules are mere guidelines.

  19. Hello really good question. To my knowledge there is not a individual incentive for police officers to give out fines.

    You answered in a comment that it looked like they are lining people up for fines. Normally here the police will do a targeted effort to fight a problem. Sometimes on the highway in some areas there have been reports of many penalties. I remember it was in the news like 40 in a day or something. I think they are to some extend placing the camera cars with the highest amount of profit. But this might simply also be to stop the problem where it is worst.

    I think (when I look it up) that the fine money does not go to any police station or officer but rather just to the government itself. Like when we way taxes I guess.

    Anyway I hope it helps. You can just ask if you wanna hear something more specific

  20. Danish police regularly do traffic raids of different kinds targeting bicyclists, drivers and pedestrians to make sure people are following the traffic laws. You will see them stationary in one place and giving out fines to people who violate the law. These are scheduled for a certain date and time frame.

    In terms of incentives there are certain yearly numbers set by government officials to manage and make sure the police do their job so to speak. This clearly has both *positive* and *negative* effects. These numbers can for instance be that they have to arrest and have let’s say 50.000 incarcerated each year and write tickets of a sum of 250.000 dkk a year.

    ​

    It’s a good way to regulate behavior for them I think. I’m no expert in police work though.

  23. The individual officer has no incentives beyond it’s their job. The upper levels used to have it written in their contracts how many fines their officers should be handing out based on averages from previous years.

  25. As both a driver and a cyclist, I know how important it is to have a working rear light, so any of the police actions here are justified. As far as I know it’s the only thing they fine for without breaking traffic laws

  26. In my experience many police officers are nice and will often let you go with a warning. Stopped me on a bike without lights on 3 times now. That should be fines for at least 3000kr. They have no harmful wish to make you pay anything

  28. Holy hell. What a shitty thread. Not OPs fault at all. People are down-voting him into oblivion for reasons I don’t understand. Why?

    To answer the question. The individual police officer does not get a raise or bonus if he manages to hand out a lot of tickes. Also, there is no minimum number that he has to reach.

    When fines are paid, the money does not go to the police district or even to some national police bank account. They go to the state. If the police manages to get a lot extra money one year, that does not mean that they can go and buy new cars for that money.

    But!!!! When the politicians negotiates the budget, and when they negotiated a big reform of the police, the fines were part of those negotiations. So politicians did decide something like “the police should make more of this kind of activity and less of that kind of activity, and we expect that will result 100 million extra in fines”. And there have been stories about police officers on the ground feeling pressured into handing out fines, even when they felt it was not the right thing to do. [https://www.avisen.dk/betjente-presses-til-at-give-boeder_135094.aspx](https://www.avisen.dk/betjente-presses-til-at-give-boeder_135094.aspx)

    I am not sure exactly what those political contracts sound like. But they do somehow (at least indirectly) put a kind of pressure on the individual police districts to actually hand out a certain number of fines. And because they also have to take care of other responsibilities in society, they have a motivation to hand out many of those fines in a time efficient manner. You witnessed an example of handing out a lot of fines in a short time 🙂

    So is this wrong. Well, I think its wrong that the police officers are pressured. Very wrong. But… I am not generally upset about those traffic controls. Bicycles ride all over the place, on sidewalks etc. all the time. I did it for 10 years when I was a youngster, basically every day, without ever being stopped. There are so far between those controls that when they eventually stop people, I think its fair to give them all a fine, even if they are not driving hazardous. If you are only stopped once every 5 or 10 years, and then you don’t even get a fine, that would be way too soft 🙂

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